Southern Charm - Floridian Tales

I am presently in Florida.  No, I am not telling you I am half a continent away so that any would-be B&E artists amongst you can violate the sanctity of my home.  I respect my readers too much to even think that.  Also, I recruited the kid from Home Alone to house sit (the one from the first two movies, as he was definitely more creative and vicious than those in the umpteenth sequels.

I share my geo-location only because it is relevant to the telling of this story.  Even more relevant is the company I am keeping.  Of course Lynda, Kendall and Avery are here, but joining us on this adventure are: my mom (Grammie); my mom-in-law (Nanny); and Lynda's brother, Adam West (Batman).  

My stories almost always result from the things people do or say.  That is what I find most compelling.  People never fail to disappoint.  They always provide excellent material.  You just have to watch and listen.  Of course, it doesn't hurt to stir the pot sometimes either, just to make the story in waiting that much more tasty, albeit not necessarily more tasteful.  I digress.  Here are a couple of incidents from early in our vacation, compliments of my daughter Kendall and Grammie.  I have labelled them as Funny and Not So Funny, but whether they are is ultimately up to you.  I am but the messenger.

Funny

All seven of us were on the can't miss ride, It's a Small World.  I think it looked exactly the same as when I first came to Disney in 1972.  Surely the words to that song become implanted in everyone who rides in those boats on rails and to all who become entranced by the vivid colours and the global, heart warming theme of the experience. Everyone in our boat, as well as those folks nearby, were all quiet, perhaps even reflective.  That was when the silence was broken by my 13 year old daughter.  She loudly exclaimed, with partial disgust and iPhone in hand, "Hey!  There's no WiFi down here.".   She has a point,  it is supposed to be a small world after all.

 Not So Funny

Typhoon Lagoon took on No Holds Barred Grammie and won the day.  Determined to do whatever rides her granddaughters do, and do them better, Grammie donned her not-so-bikini after a six year absence from all things swimming.  She warmed up well.  The Swirling Beast was no match for her tenacity.  In retrospect, riding on top of an inflatable rubber life raft perhaps should not be considered such a mean feat.

With confidence assured, Grammie followed along as we ascended the many steps to the top of the next adventure - a virtual free fall down a tube of white water.  No rubber rafts this time.  Grammie was equipped only with her wits and her millennium era swim suit.  I made sure to precede Grammie so I would be able to capture the spectacle of her splashdown.  Instead, what I saw was my 75 year old mother arriving at the splash pool at the end of the "ride" and remaining submerged and remaining submerged and..... 

Grammie reminded me of Jack, as he followed the Titantic to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, arms waving, no panic to be seen, just acceptance.  I watched, waiting for her to standup - the pool was about 30 inches deep, but she didn't, and she didn't and she didn't.  My mom was drowning!  

As Batman looked on, I jumped in front of the lifeguard, who was not doing that job at that particular moment, and pulled my mom from the not so icy depths.  She was unflappable.  Grammie said she thought it was all just part of the ride, although she said she couldn't have held her breath any longer.  There's no way Grammie would ever surrender to fear or a near death experience.  For her, it was, "What ride are we doing next?".   Unflappable!  I put my glasses back on, tucked my cape back into my Speedo, checked in my superego, and returned to being just another nameless face in the crowd.

If there's a lesson here, it is that Grammie needs to learn, that when submerged, to be a bit more "flappable".  At least a little bit so that the lifeguard will notice.  We don't want to lose the one and only Grammie.  A world without Grammie would be a too small world after all.

The End

About the Author

Jim continues to vacation in Florida, where there is no snow.  Earlier today he received a call from his lawyer.  Apparently, he is being sued by both the propane delivery guy and the NL Power meter reader.  Each sustained significant injuries while approaching the Nixon house over the previous two days.  The perpetrator is reported to be a 30 something year old male, who says his name is Kevin McAllister.  The police [presently have my house surrounded and are trying to get him to come out.  The cops say they may use water cannons, but it's a last resort because it has a history of not working. (No kidding!  Can you say - Leo Crockwell?)  My lawyer tells me that everything will be okay, after all, Kevin is Home Alone.

Man Cave Mathematics

My chest swelled with pride.  My daughters wanted me to play video games with them and they weren't taking no for an answer.  Perhaps I was still the 'king of cool' in their eyes.  My girls, now 13 and 11, wanted their daddy, so how could I refuse.  I followed them down to the room that when I built this house ten years ago I had envisioned to be my man cave.  It was to be the place where I, as head of the household, would go to regenerate, to relax after a day of hunting and gathering.  A place where my woman and my offspring would enter only to bring me my slippers and an occasional glass of milk, to be accompanied by a row or two of Oreo cookies (the dark ones, not the vanilla wannabes; and always eaten whole, never cracked open to slurp the creamy filling all by itself. Sacrilege!)

My cave never was to be.  Soon after moving in, it became the vault for precious treasures.  That would have been fine but I had neither ownership of nor say in these riches.  I'm not sure that I minded though.  I just wanted that room to be mine and mine alone.  It was never to be.  My kids strong-armed it from me. They are tough little girls.  They, being two and me being one, had the strength of numbers.  More importantly for maintaining their claim to my cave, they had the ever present, lurking in the shadows, not to be crossed, support of their mother.  One of the biggest surprises in a man's life is when he learns this mathematical equation: (MOTHER > wife).   There are never any exceptions to this rule...never.  As a result, I learned another equation:  (KIDS > husband).  By using the transitive property or my take on it, it then makes sense that: (KIDS > husband) (husband = man cave) (husband < = 0), therefore (man cave = ain't never going to happen).

In the early days, my room of desire was filled to the rafters with such wondrous things as: Barbie's extra large play house; a few thousand stuffed creatures; several large bins that had gazillions of those stupid, useless and one use only McDonald toys; and few million dolls in various stages of undress with many minus a limb or two.  Mr. Dress Up would have have been envious of the number of princess dresses and costumes that overflowed from several more large bins.  He, Casey and Finnegan could have been trapped underneath those mountainous piles for all I know.  I never went in the place.  I just did an occasional wishful glance through the doorway as I swept, mopped and did my daily household chores, ever mindful that Cinderella had triumphed.  In my daydreaming, I pictured my kids bringing my cookies, milk and slippers and fittingly, my slippers were glass.  I was Jimderella.

Today, that room is the "playroom".  The Wii and Xbox are kept company by girlie coloured bean bags.  No war games make it to the big screen.  The girls prefer less hostile pursuits.  Their latest craze is some kind of dance thing on the Xbox.  This is what they asked me to play with them.  I'm not exactly built for dancing of any sort, nor have I been gifted with much rhythm. I held my own on the dance floor in the 80's by doing the ankle slap - 2 side to sides, one step forward and one step back.  Throw in the occasional Night Fever arm in the air, pretend to know the words, and you were golden.  There was no phone camera, no video this or that. You just had to survive three or four minutes and you could get off the floor, ego in tact.  Such is not the case today.  Even the damn video games have cameras!

There I was a few days ago, on the dance floor of the kids' playroom, sandwiched between my two little girls.  The proud and popular dad.  Or so I thought.  The music began and I quickly learned that the object of the game is to copy the moves that your video image is performing on the TV.  While doing it, we were laughing and having a great time.  It's also not a bad workout.  After our song ended, the scores popped up and I was third or last.  The game said I was "creative", which was a nice way of saying that I didn't exactly copy much of what my image had done.  This was not unexpected.  What was unexpected is what happened next.  The kids played back segments of our dancing.  I was worse than I ever imagined.  The ankle slap wasn't as timeless as I had thought.  To add insult to injury, the kids then proceeded to do weird things to our images.  One was to make our heads two or three times there actual size.  I have to admit that it was funny to watch.  My girls and I laughed hysterically and I felt all warm and closer to them than ever.  This was a wonderful daddy-daughters moment.  That was until they informed me that I looked like Shrek and they proceeded to laugh even harder.

I think I was set up from the beginning.  I certainly can't be mad at my kids for poking fun at me.  They actually weren't wrong.  Shrek is green and that colour describes me perfectly.  Green with envy because they have my man cave.  I won't try to get even with with my kids either.  They likely come by there deviousness honestly - from their mother, Princess Lynda-ona.  To end my story, here's one last formula that may be foreshadowing events to come: (Wife > husdand) (husband = dead man).  The end!

For Change Sake

"Nothing is as constant as change."  Not my words, but ones so very very true.  How about this one - "A change is as good as a rest."  Again, not mine, but I sure believe in its message.  Now when you combine the message in these expressions with one of my all time favourites, then we've really have something prophetically profound.  "If you've got an itch.....scratch it."

Ten years ago, that exactly what I did.  Lynda and I were living in Burlington, Ontario.  Kendall and Avery were three and one years of age and went to a wonderful lady's house whenever we trotted off to our jobs. We all resided in our quaint little bungalow, in an established area of the city, with massive oak and maple trees lining our peaceful suburbia.  After being there for 8 years, we had formed great relationships with many of our neighbours too, with a lot of them becoming more like family than merely just friends.  We had a pool.  The weather in Burlington is ranked as being near the top for the entire country.  We loved the warm summers and short winters.  Lynda also loved her job.  As for me, I was no longer working the dreaded weekend and night shifts and had settled into a Monday to Friday day job as an investigator of white collar crimes for the RCMP.  Not much of a requirement to wear my bullet proof vest in that gig, albeit the paper cuts were brutal.  At least they were until my fingers toughened up.  Perhaps I should have used the puncture resistant gloves that I had dawned so often whenever I was searching the person, vehicle, or anything to do with a suspected drug trafficker.  Oh well, hindsight is 20-20.  (No, again, not my expression!  I need to work on being more original.)  I certainly can't forget Doug and Dallas.  Our dearest friends and soul mates.  Transplanted Newfies too, they lived not too far away and we could usually be found together, doing some of the "funnest" stuff and making memories to last a lifetime.

By any measurement, my life was pretty good a decade ago.  I could have easily convinced the RCMP to leave me in the Greater Toronto Area for the remainder of my career, so no one was likely to force us to leave the home that I had lived in longer than any other during my entire life.  No one, that is, except me.

I still don't know what exactly it was that caused my itch.  I just knew that I needed a change and that my family did too.  Perhaps it was dad's death a few months earlier.  That is the most likely candidate.  I spent a few weeks back home during dad's final days and after he died.  I left Newfoundland in 1989 and this was the longest time that I had spent back there since.  When I returned to life in Ontario, I developed a yearning to go home.  It seems that no matter how long they are away, transplanted Newfoundlanders always call the place home.  Lynda needed some convincing, quite a bit actually.  Eventually she came on board and I was able to call in a few favours and by the summer of 2004, we all had relocated back to the island.

Today, we have a wonderful house, with a view of the ocean to die for.  We live in the woods.  There is lots of privacy and we enjoy doing so many outdoor activities that come with being nestled in our quaint little town.  The kids are 13 and 11 and this is the only home that they remember.  They love it here.  My mom lives with us.  She has her little apartment downstairs and she is the glue that bonds us all.  Her baking is pretty good too.  We have great neighbours and have watched families grow and prosper during the last 10 years.  Lynda has worked at the same company for the last eight years and enjoys the challenges but welcomes the flexibility the job provides so she can partake in the kids' activities.  I'm no longer in the RCMP, having burned the candle at both ends for too many years, my mind and body told me it was time to leave.  I have tinkered at several jobs but because I haven't jumped back into the workforce entirely.  This has afforded me with the opportunity to spend so much more time with Kendall and Avery.  I am blessed to have had this opportunity and it's my most treasured gift.  As for the weather here.....it sucks.

So guess what?  My itch has returned.  Change is in the wind.  I don't know what yet, nor do I know where. I just know that it is very likely that a year or two from now, things will be very different for me and my family.  I'll take my time, think it through, and consult Lynda constantly, so that we make the best decision possible.  It's just like when you go on the city bus and the driver says..."Correct change only."

As for my life so far, I wouldn't change a thing.